Tank Top Tips

[Tharrin]

Hi folks,

I'm Tharrin (a rank 28 IB), I'm new to the guild and relatively new to tanking, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce myself and also pick the brains of the hardened sword and boarders out there.

Call me a lover not a fighter, but in the past I've usually stuck to the healers and done my best to stay out of the scrum of the melee. However I thought it would be fun to see how life in the shield wall compares and I have to say that 28 ranks in I'm rather enjoying it! :)

However most of my experience in WAR has been on my RP and so my tanking knowledge is a bit sparse. I was therefore hoping that some of the more experienced meat shields out there could help me out by posting a few their tanking top tips (especially those relating to the IB).

Thanks all and see you on the battlefield

[konfuzfanten]

Hi mate, are we talking pvp or pve? What kind of playing style are you going for? S&B harassment/survival(CCing everything you see) or 2-hander dpsing?

Edit: we have a thread on knights tips: http://immune-systems.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=4757 try and check it out, ohh and ask Ovation[RR 80 knight - hes very active on our forum] for tricks for the harassment/survival style :)

[Tharrin]

At the moment I’m focusing on RvR, although I do enjoy the occasional dungeon crawl too. I’m set up at the minute as a sword and board tank as I’m not really interested on doing dps (that’s the dps’s job in my opinion). I’d like a set up that allows me to help my group as much as possible (that’s the healer in me coming out again! :)) and to that end I’ve gone down the brotherhood path. Although I don’t know whether this is the best choice in the long run?

Also I’m always happy for just any general advice for tanks. For instance I still don’t really know what attribute/s I should be stacking. Should I focus on wounds and armour, wounds and toughness, resistances or a mix of them all?

Thanks for the link konfuzfanten, I'll check it out and see what I can pick up from it.

[konfuzfanten]

On stats stacking:

Wounds:
Good stat, gives you more hit points. Its especially helpfull in pve as you will be crittede from time to time and a lot of wounds talis will keep you alive even if you get hit by a few unlucky crits. The problems with wounds in rvr is that if ppl are focusing you, your team is properly dead and you will die, its just a matter for time. Another problem with stacking wounds(with low armour/tgh ) in tier 1-3 in rvr is that you will put a lot of pressure on your healers. So from a healers perspective stacking wounds in rvr is not the best thing.

Armour:
Both a very good and semi-bad stat. Armour will mitigate all psychical dmg to a hard cap of 75%. So if you have maxed your armour you will ignore 75% of all psychical dmg(WE, choppas, most 2-hander tanks, herders, melee doks attacks). The main problem with stacking armour is that it grows weaker as you gain levels. Let me give you an example:

Lets say you have 1000 in armour at lvl 20 and the same at lvl 25:

Lvl 20:
(1000 / (20 x 110)) or 45,5% dmg reduction.
Lvl 25:
(1000 / (25 x 110)) or 36,4% dmg reduction.

So the same armour goes from being okey, to being really bad without you doing anything, other then just levelling up.

But but but armour stack is good for something. If you can keep your armour stacked with top level armour talis and keep getting the best armour you will negate between 70-75% of all psychical dmg. Since most dmg done in tier 1-3 (both pve and pvp) is done with psychical dmg armour stacking is a cheap way of countering most 2-hander tanks, choppas, herders, WE, melee doks, maras. And ofc armour is the thing to stack for tier 1-3 dungeons.

Toughness:
This is my stat, I LOVE tgh. What tgh does is that it mitigates a certain number of dmg from each hit/tick. So lets say you have 500 tgh, that will remove 100 dmg from each hit you take or dot that ticks on you. Tgh will kill dmg from dots and weak aoe and it works against all dmg types. If you only fight in sc’s and orvr I would go with tgh.

Now there is a few problems with tgh:
1) Compared to the other survival talis tgh is very expensive and hard to get, you have to make them yourself.
2) Compared to armour and wounds it will give a smaller amount of survivability without a healer or if you are in a "short"/solo fight.
3) A bad stat for pve.

The reason tgh is a bad stat for pve and a good stat for pvp is because of the way mitigation works in WAR:
In pve most mobs hit you for a high amount of dmg from relative few hits. Where as in pvp a lot of dmg comes from dots and other small dmg sources.

Lets make another example:

A 500 tgh tank is getting hit by 2 sources:

Mob A hitting for 900 pr hit each 3 sec
Mob B hitting for 300 pr hit each 1 sec.

Now both mobs are doing 900 dmg over 3 sec, but you will be taking 800 dmg from mob A and only 600 from mob B. This illustrates why you should be stacking tgh in pvp and not in pve. Another good point about tgh is that you need less healing to keep you alive.

Initiative:
Will reduce your enemies (mobs and destro players) change to crit you, not a important stat in tier 1-3. kinda important in rvr tier 4, VERY important in pve tier 4/dungeons. In the top end dungeons(LV, VL) boss crits will kill you so if you want to tank in the end dungeons try and get to 0% change to crit.

On Panzer I stack armour with some tgh.

Ill write something on my noob playing style next :)

[Aelahin]

Listen to him, He's Stat Boy you know...


A basic Rule of thumb is indeed Toughness for RvR and Wounds for PvE..Thats the basics for Sword and Shield tanks. Now it gets more complicated (as stated above)

But wait till Rocktaker comes back from Vacation (judging by airlines, it could be a while...). She is an RR80 Ironbreaker so she prob has some very good insight. She's not really forum active so you might have to catch her ingame instead...

[Weishaupt]

Wounds is a given and applies both for PvE and RvR, you want to be as close to the cap as you can get. Stat soft cap is 1050 on all stats except the "power" ones i.e. melee power, healing power etc. which have no cap. So you should be aiming in T4 to be at 1050 wounds which translates to 10500 health.

Other than that, broadly speaking:-

PvE = Armour, Initiative, Block and Strength.
RvR = Toughness, Initiative, Strength and Weaponskill.

99% of all the PvE damage you will take as a tank is physical and Armour is your only mitigation, a lot of PvE bosses/mobs will also debuff your armour so stopping at the 75% cap is not enough, you should be aiming for 85-100%. Toughness DOES NOT mitigate PvE damage at all.

Initiative (or items that directly reduce your chance to be crit) is essential in PvE, by the time you are on Lost Vale or Vulture Lord you should be at 0% chance to be crit with no exceptions. A string of crits off a boss will kill you, non-crits won't.

Block value should never be underestimated and you should always be on the lookout for shields with more block rating and more % block value on them. A block is 100% damage mitigation, if you had 100% block rating you would never take any damage from sources in your frontal arc. LotD purchasable weapons and shields with block talismans in make awesome starting points for T4 tanking. Block is actually still very useful in RvR, you can block ranged attacks as well as melee, nothing like blocking a WoP or some PBAOE from a Sorc ;)

Armour is less useful in RvR because there's a lot of non-physical damage flying around e.g. Sorcs are Corporeal and Spirit, Chosen are largely Spirit, Shammies will hit you with Elemental etc. However you still want a respectable amount to avoid getting melee'd to death and to allow you to run Focused Offence without being squishier than an Archmage!

Toughness mitigates all damage types in RvR but with the level of weapon dps and stat stacking in T4 it's pretty useless unless you have over 600 these days. A S&B tank in T4 RvR should really be looking to soft cap toughness (1050) or close to it.

Remember in RvR it's still the crits that will kill you so having 1050 toughness, 5k armour and 1050 wounds will still not be ideal if you have a 21% chance to be crit, so keep your initiative up so your chance to be crit is still low.

I've mentioned Strength and Weaponskill in both PvE and RvR because, especially as an Ironbreaker, unless you can do some damage you will have problems.

In PvE damage = threat and you will need to be pumping some out with good dps around you, so having 'respectable' strength is good - once your survivability stats are sorted (they come first). You can't rely entirely on your Menace (and Long Held Grudge) tactic if you have highly geared BWs pumping out massive damage, you also need to be generating some threat through damage.

In RvR you will simply be ignored by destro if you cannot hurt them. If you're not getting hit then you will find it harder to build grudge and therefore harder to make an impact. Weaponskill is important in RvR because it provides armour penetration and with the degree of armour stacking available (1001 & SC stacking anyone :p) you will need some penetration to hurt people. Even soft capped strength won't help you if 75% of your damage is being mitigated on every hit, hence the need for some Weaponskill.

Good luck balancing all that until you are RR346654789856 and have brilliant gear!!

[konfuzfanten]

Toughness DOES NOT mitigate PvE damage at all
Incorrect, tgh works on ALL dmg except moral and other unmitigate dmg. You can test this easy by slotting Rugged on a tank kill a mob, deslotting it and see what happens.

Other then that you really dont need to worry to much as a tank i orvr/sc's (unless you are a 2-hander). Most destro will leave you alone unless you can do something that will get you some attention: armour debuffing, punting and heal debuffing.

Again i WILL be back with some tips on playing style, have been a looonge day today.

[Peavey]

Toughness is sh!t in PVE unfortunately.. but roxxor in PVP :D

[Tharrin]

Thanks for all the replies folks :) It’s all really useful stuff and it’s great to have more of an idea of what to aim for stats wise. Sounds like a lot to try and balance, would it be best to have 2 gear set ups, one for RvR (with an emphasis on the toughness, wounds and strength) and one for PvE (with more emphasis on initiative, armour, wounds and strength)? Obviously this would make more sense once I reach 40 as at the moment I change gear to often to invest in any of the pricier talismans.

[Aelahin]

We have several people in the guild who can make talismans for free or way less thatn they go for on the Auction House...just ask in guild chat in game and see who answers the call

[Peavey]

Cross posting another tank tip for warband:

tanks are to obtain the 3 set resists/morale proc ability: The Obdurate Seal/Crow Caller's Chain/Wordbreaker Band (http://immune-systems.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=15495&postcount=16)

[Polemides]

re: soft caps

I think there's an idea that soft caps are "easy" to do. From what I've seen, they're easy to bump up, sure, at the cost of gimping quite a few other stats, if not the whole character.

For example, I've read several threads about SMs, capping out TGH. All of a sudden, these guys are almost invulnerable in RvR......

...except now 99% of them couldn't hurt a fly due to the fact that they neglected STR,

and when they are hit, a crit will drop 'em no matter what the TGH is because the Wounds will be so low.

So, speaking of tanks (not BWs, etc), I'd like to see an example where a meat shield has
1) capped one of his stats
2) still viable
3) NOT RR70+, so this will apply to the vast majority of players. :D

[Peavey]

Unfortunately Snowy, I don't have the screenie. But I've seen it done with a toughness tank who is still somewhat viable. It really depends on how you play the character, as well as play style/strategy of the group + the composition.

Then again in the end you can't quite have everything, you gotta focus somewhere.

I know I'm RR80 but my strength is 400+ not even 500 buffed. Toughness sitting at around 900+ . I still can harass if I want.

And by the way, totally out of context, I just saw this lol SM screenshot:
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/5652/283u.jpg

[Aelahin]

Damn, what the hell happened with him...that many kills and THAT many dBs without dying and he gets Squat RR....

Currently my tank runs Str/toughness at about 600/500 - So I can survive some and kill some - but I'd need some serious setmixing to get strength high.


On my (soon) parry build I'll sacrifice some strength (almost 200 if I change everything) for getting my parries over 75% with WODS. If I mix sets I can get a Tough/Str/Init buff is seems as I recall form DP, Sentinel and Invader(maybe warlord soonish)

I plan to run GWM for sure, and debating using Balanced Accuracy, the free Parry ones and Rugged for a atoughness boost...which I will need to run main tank (and BA can be replaced with menace for PvE high end main tanking)

In this build I'll loose a good bit of dam, but it should be that noticable since my abbs use spirit dam that doesn't sale with strength (only thing going down would be DPS, and since I use a 2H I shoulb be about equal with a S&S guy).

Basically I can change between offensive and defensive tank simply by respec renow and change my armor...no need for me to reset mastery trees...

And in the long run the losses incurred from only going toughness or only going strength isn't worth the dam you do to the rest of your statline in my opinion. We are not DPS'ers so we can't compete with them, so we should only take enough to assist them...and we aren't really full on defensive group tanks so we need to be able to hurt those going after our guarded target...and I feel I'm close to a good balance between the two without going for min/maxing...

[Cotopaxi]

283 deathblows in stc? I dont think so, unless via the troll killer item from the weekend warfront recentrly. One press of the button = one deathblow on the stats screen.

[Polemides]

Again, always an interesting debate. :D

Different playstyles require different sacrifices in stats. I run 2H about 9K wounds, 430ish toughness, and close to 700 strength. That's with 3 pieces INV gear and 2 of DP (for intitaive boost). All my talis are STR in this build. My Armour is at 99.1%, and Parry is 19% or 20% (so with EF, parry is 45%, hook this to IR, and it works very nicely indeed!).

Switching to S&B gear, STR drops 80-90, wounds rises about 50, and toughness, the same.

PvE is ok since I'll usually have toughness linaments, wounds buff, and WP armour buff, not too mention superb friendly healers!

In RvR, I think the devs are pushing tanks more and more to become damage shields/sponges, DPSers deal the kills, and healers, well... heal. Kinda strange when you think of it. Tanks are to be walking walls, and that's about it. DPSers are easily broken, but are the sharp end of the sword. There is no one "whole" character. Some are better in their roles than others (ie: the IB is the best meat shield/damage absorb, but lack in dps output), but the main thrust of the devs seems to be to make sure the different classes are fall squarely within their archtype.

I just have trouble seeing the soft-cap reached sub RR70 and being anything other than a one-trick pony (ie: all DPS, no dmg avoidance (and still nowhere near as good as a full on DPSer), or guard-bot and no dps, etc) Interesting problem to tweak though :)

[Prelate]

The killing blows on that screenie seems too high (with that little renown it looks like some one has been killing lots of bunnies), but I do think SM is without a doubt best tank on damage on order side, and any side to be hones because of spirit damage. In fact im so confident on SM that I am willing to take my noob SM on dps race in scenarios against any tank (includin ovation rr 80 Kotbs) when I'll get back from my hiatus. 1 hander, 2 hander it does not matter for I will win. It's only the group utility that SM lacks.

[Peavey]

SM is by far the best on the damage side no doubt. I went on dps race against S/S SM while I'm on my 2hand. And still the SM wins :P (and of course I also did not put my survivability mode)

Have also seen a case where an SM outdamaged a Slayer in melee assist train setup premade by the same SM who beat me :P

[Kabane]

Question..
Parry, Block as high as possible , better than capping TGH?

[Peavey]

I would say minimum toughness is around 500-600. While block/parry etc is nice to have at more than 42% - sometimes those undefendable talisman/items would negate your high rate of avoidance

[Zafiriel]

http://www.massively.com/2010/10/30/waging-war-guide-to-defensive-stats/

Here's a surprisingly informative article over at massively.com covering defensive stats and how they work.
A good read for anyone, especially tanks.

:beer:

[Prelate]

From my extensive studies about tanking during late summer and fall, I think T-44 is only way to go :p

[Zafiriel]

I can only concur with you my esteemed colleague ;)

damn those Russian programmers making the game :p


but still... King Tiger FTW! :smokin:

[Hegander]

What about Willpower though?

[konfuzfanten]

Willpower negates intelligence and buffs disrupt, so ppl that do int based attacks (sorcs, bws, shamans, AMs, magus...) will be hit with a minimal dmg debuff and a higher disrupt rate, if you have a very high wp.
But as a tank it doesnt matter, never stack or think about wp.

[Butche]

My IB tanks spec is full defensive with max block and max disrupt/dodge

Half Sov and half worn Sov = 1000+ tough 60+% block 1050+ wounds

I find that yes I dont kill alot, but then not much can kill me either, save maybe a full grp of 80+ - a wb of dessie